


The Angie Years

by SecondSilk



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: F/M, Future Fic, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-04-06
Updated: 2013-02-21
Packaged: 2017-12-03 04:42:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 20,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/694287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecondSilk/pseuds/SecondSilk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Xander looks back on the last 20 years of his life and how it lead him to where he is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Two Photos

The Angie Years ended last week. The beginning of the end was the day before Elizabeth’s tenth birthday. Dawn was ten when I first met her. She was ten and a half when she learnt that her sister was the Slayer. She was fourteen and a half when we learnt that she wasn’t human. Well, wasn’t entirely human.

This is always what happens; one thing, one thought, will take me on a trip through my memories. My memories of Dawn seem to be stronger than others. I heard somewhere that memories are subjective. Maybe it’s just that, as the monks gave them to me, they didn’t depend on me paying attention to begin with. I can ‘remember’ the look she gave me when we got out of Miss French’s basement even though I know that Buffy would never have allowed Dawn that close to anything to do with sex, or lack thereof. So there’s no telling why.

The night before Elizabeth’s birthday I settled on the couch to look at the photos. I have two photos to remind me of the Buffy years. I think they are the only ones, and I took them as insurance against Fate. Even when Buffy told me to take Dawn I knew I would be back for the fight. I didn’t have any plan to return, of course, but I knew I would see them all again. Such thoughts temp Fate. It took a while, but Buffy and Willow did teach me that one. So I took the photos, so that I wouldn’t need them.

Either I didn’t change the clothes I was wearing, or I never bothered to return the photos, because I had them with me when we crashed at the Hyperion. I didn’t tell anyone. Buffy was mourning Spike and I was mourning Anya. Giles, Willow and Dawn had lost the last connection they had to the people they lost when the cemetery was sucked into the hellhole. I just never mentioned them after that.

Elizabeth, though, seems to have a sixth sense when it comes to photos. It might be a seventh sense, after that one that means you can clap your hands with your eyes closed. I had had the photo album out for half a minute when she appeared at the bottom of the stairs.

“Hey, Dada, what are you up to?”

She sat down next to me and snuggled under my arm. Apparently she wasn’t too old to do that.

“Is that you?” she asked, pointing at Oz.

I chuckled. “Oz,” I said. “Me,” I added, pointing.

I was astounded that she thought I was ever as cool as Oz.

Giles had taken the photo one day in the Library. I know I was trying to pull Cordelia on to my lap. Willow was sitting on Oz’s lap, playing with his hair. He seemed to be trying to pretend that he didn’t like it. But you never could tell with Oz. I liked that Giles had taken such a silly photo.

Lizzie looked closely at the young me, and smiled.

“He looks sweet. And he has two eyes.”

“Yes, well, I lost my in a fight many years after that,” I explained.

I had told my daughters stories about ‘the Buffy Years,’ but not in a context they’d believe. I started when Lizzie was four, Sarah was nine, and they wanted to go trick or treating.

Before then I hadn’t been able to think of any story I could tell. “There was teacher I liked once, who turned out to be a giant bug” or “our school librarian used to summon demons” or “I once thought I was a hyena.” There would be automatic questions of ‘what happened then?’ And I didn’t fancy telling them I had eaten a raw pig, let alone a live one.

Angie didn’t want them to go. She felt that it was commercial and involved too much sugar.

“There won’t be any real monsters,” I said. “They take Halloween off, it tends to be too noisy. What do you want go as?”

“You have those gorgeous cloaks you wore for that play,” Angie said. They were gingham, Sarah rolled her eyes.

“Can we be demons, mom?” Lizzie cried. She understood that Angie had given in on the issue of going at all. She could read her mother well at four.

“We’ve got the face paint that Robert and Lisa gave us for Christmas,” Sarah explained. “And the hair spray. I can have Lizzie’s baseball bat, and she can have the mini axe dad made us.”

Lizzie nodded vigorously.

“But everyone will be demons. It’ll be unusual to go dressed like Dorothy,” Angie tried to argue.

That was a bad move. The neither remake was as good as the Judy Garland version. I knew that Angie didn’t want them in make up and hair spray.

“You could be Slayers,” I offered. I had it all worked out. They could dress as themselves, and carry little model scythes. I’d long been used to living in a world dominated by women, but I’ve never become comfortable with the joint ‘you are such a guy’ look.

“Hey. One Halloween we got turned into the costumes we were wearing. I thought I was a private in the army.”

I saluted to them. Sarah was impressed, Lizzie laughed. Angie smiled her ‘you’re a silly man,’ smile and kissed my cheek. I had told her that I had trained a little. I was, of course, called upon to explain the entire event. That’s when I explained that one of my friends was a Slayer, whose calling was to fight demons, and she always won.

They went out the next night dressed as slayers with mini scythes. They were so cute. Sarah explained to anyone she was a Slayer, and Lizzie was a potential who was in training.

After that I was able to tell them many stories about the Slayer. I told them about the invisible girl, the Buffy-bot and how Dawn had been created by monks. Sarah spent an afternoon raging against her sixth grade teacher and then most of the night laughing about the story of Principal Snyder being eaten by a giant snake. He probably tried to tell it that it couldn’t eat him because he was too important.

Angie liked the stories too. They usually drew comments like ‘you have the most amazing imagination.’ She never believed them. Even though they never really contradicted themselves, and sat in a timeline. I think she thought they were the stories we told to survive growing up in Sunnydale. I didn’t tell her the whole truth of anything after our first meeting.


	2. Two Photos

I met Angie in a bar almost two years after the ‘gas caves surrounding the area of Sunnydale, northern California, collapsed, destroying the recently deserted town.’ There is something strangely normal about the story of me meeting Angie in a bar. Considering Buffy met Angel because he was warning her of some great danger, and Spike because he wanted to kill her.

I was sitting, drinking, trying to pick if any of the others there were vampires and wondering at my luck when she walked in. I didn’t notice at first, or luck-wondering would have increased. I’d managed to make it much further than my first road trip. I had four weeks work at the local lumberyard while one of their guys was sick. And I had a motel room like Faith’s.

Buffy's latest email had said they’d got the school kind of set up. Willow had found the Council’s assets, and they were, in fact, officially under Giles’s control. They had also finalised the Watcher-Witch-Slayer structure. They had wanted four, like we had had, but Willow had pointed out that there was only one of me, so that wouldn’t work.

She was in charge of relations with the covens around the world. Most were scared of her from the whole ending the world deal. But they had all felt the magic that she had pulled for the Slayers. Buffy was talking to the new Slayers and their parents, using what experience she had gained during her counselling stint. Giles was talking to the government.

And I’d run away. And they’d let me go. I was looking at the bottom of my glass, thinking about ‘the road I’d come’ when a flash of pink caught my eye.

Angie and a friend had sat down at the bar two stools down. They were wearing some hideous pink diner uniform and chatting animatedly, they way women like that seem to be able to do.

I was staring at her name badge. ‘Angela,’ the feminine form of the name Angel, from the Latin, Angelus. I knew that because I had read several baby name books. And I had read them because some where in the previous seven years my brain had gotten use to reading the same pieces of meaningless information written in different ways. Giles ruined me. I now have to have regular intakes of information. Demon books being hard to come by, and difficult to explain, I read anything. I know that Alexander was from the Greek, meaning defender of man and that Buffy was often a shortened form of Elizabeth, although it could also mean ‘shinning one.’

Angie caught me starting and grinned at me.

“What are you staring at?” she asked, with a grin.

“I knew a guy called Angelus once, Angela,” I said.

That was what had caught my attention. She was nothing at all like Angel, Mr-dark-and-brooding. She was a little like Cordelia, actually. And that was, shockingly, an appealing thought.

“It’s hardly far that you know my name, when all I know about you is you’ve been in a nasty fight.”

I smiled. Something in her manner reminded me of Anya without actually being anything like her.

I had had enough alcohol to send Scruffy Xander to sleep. Suave Xander held out his hand.

“Xander,” I said.

She shook hands with me! Admittedly, she was grinning quite wryly at the time.

“Angie,” she said. “How did you loose the eye?”

Unfortunately Scruffy Xander had decided to use my common sense as a pillow.

“An evil guy with supper strength wanted to stop a friend of mine getting something she needed in order to stop his boss destroying the world. I got in the way.”

She chuckled appreciatively. I had never thought that that description could be funny. Everyone else – that is Angel, Wesley and the others at the hotel – had all nodded gravely. Angie didn’t believe in big-bads. I liked it. It was easy to deal with. Unless she really was a demon and having me on, I thought. But it didn’t turn out like that.

We glanced at each other a couple of time during the rest of the evening. And she no doubt discussed me with the friends she was sitting with. But we didn’t speak again.

Two days later I was driving home from the yard. It was, again typically, raining. She was walking home, trying to hold her umbrella against the wind. I pulled up beside her and wound the window down.

“Angie! I promise I won’t eat you. Do you want to get some food some place dry?”

She managed a graceful open door, fold umbrella, sit down, close door manoeuvre despite the wind. She grinned at me from under her soaked cap.

“There’s a nice place…” she waved in the general direction across town. It was enough in my direction for me to lie with convincing nonchalance and I drove.

I was a pretty place. I wasn’t flash so our wet work clothes weren’t out of place. But it was nice enough that I felt I could have dressed better. But then, I often feel like that. Suave Xander doesn’t always appear.

The evening went well, as witnessed by all subsequent events. I asked her a little about what she did and told her a little about Anya. She laughed when I told her that high school was literally hell. She asked me why I was on the road.

“I’m running away,” I said.

She nodded. “I’ve always wanted to do that.”

But I knew I needed to explain it to her. I just didn’t know how it would sound.

“There was this guy who had particular issues with a friend of mine. She’s little, but a tough fighter. He had a gang. We all teamed up to fight him. One of his guys killed my ex. And my friend lost someone too. The place I grew up was dangerous, we’ve all lost someone. It was too much for me. They’re all trying to rebuild their lives, I couldn’t stay and watch.”

It was true enough. She smiled sadly at me. She though I was some sort of hero for helping my friend. I couldn’t tell her that it was the battle against the ultimate evil so I really wasn’t going to be doing anything else. Enough other people had run away that maybe I did deserve some of it. I tried to smile.

“Where did you grow up?” she asked.

“Sunnydale,” I said. “It’s a small town about –”

“I know where it is,” she said. “It disappeared a couple of years ago. And there was always a lot of gang violence there.”

I nodded. Twenty months. PCP.

“Wasn’t there a mass break out of laryngitis a few years before that?”

“Yeah. That led to some weirdness. I think it was the gas from the caves though.”

She nodded. That was the best explanation anyone had come up with. It explained the strange egg monster, the hole Spike caused, the silence, everyone leaving, most of the violence and the final collapse.

“Is that how you lost your eye, gang stuff?” she asked.

I remembered the way I’d described the fight and decided that I had to make it as normally sounding as possible.

“Nah. Work accident. I get a bit of pension for it actually, which works out okay. And I have to take a driving test every year. The gang stuff was mostly just punch ups.”

“You were part of a gang?”

“Everyone was part of a gang,” I said. “We were the Scoobies.”

She giggled.

“Daggy name, I know. But it meant no one needed to take us on in order to prove themselves. Our leader knew a few combat skills. I had trained in the army a while. We knew a martial arts coach.”

She asked, and I answered, questions about Sunnydale. I never mentioned anything supernatural except the “evil-demon-worshiping-Mayor” but she took it as figurative. I didn’t tell as many stories as I described some of the effects of Sunnydale. It was easier than thinking up euphemisms, but the more I talked the easier they came. I talked to her about Tara, which I’d never talked to anyone about before. I told her that Willow had wanted to destroy the world. She’d gone after the guy that did it, wanted to kill him. I told her about Spike. I also told stories about Dawn, about the things I remembered her doing, about watching her grow up. Dawn balanced out the tales of messy darkness that I hadn’t really realised made up most of our lives.

It wasn’t so bad when you knew that Spike was a Vampire and Anya a Demon and Willow really did have the power to take everyone out. Everything was grander like that.

Angie told me stories about her life too. Her older brother used to beat her up a bit. And her uncle would always be coming on to her mom. She and her sister used to pretend their backyard was whole different world with princesses and dragons. It was amazing to hear about those sorts of worries. And she’d overcome them. And the stories she’d been able to make up. I had had to worry about nasty monsters, not the everyday things that should have been all right. Time with my folks hadn’t been great, but I had had Willow.

“You don’t say their names,” she said after some time swapping stories.

It was getting close to half past eleven.

“Sorry,” I said. “I think it’s habit, you know, talking to outsiders.”

I started to tell her all our names, but she stopped me. She said something about it being in a different time, and different part of my life. It would be easier if I didn’t try to carry it around with me all the time. And besides, it made it all mysterious.

“I have to go, now, anyway,” she said. “I have the early shift tomorrow.”

“Run away with me,” I said.

She raised an eyebrow.

“I’ve got two weeks here, then I’m driving closer to Hershey, where they make the chocolate.”

“Okay.”

Just like that she agreed. She says now that I had some look on my face, like she was a life ring to a drowning man. I don’t believe her.

“But I’ll still have to do the early shift tomorrow.”

I drove her home, said good night and walked back to my hotel through the last of the rain. That was the moment that the Buffy years had ended. I had described the last twenty years of life without using her name.

I finally replied to Willow and Buffy’s emails the next day. I told them, in what Willow described as glowing detail, about Angie and her running away with me. Both their replies seemed a little distant. I knew they were both working hard at college. I think they had heard that I was distant too. I had left them behind and really was running away.

At the time I didn’t notice too much. Angie had agreed to drive across the country with me.


	3. Unexpected, last meeting

I haven’t really spoken to anyone in almost twenty years. I sent regular updates of my progress through the country. But we didn’t exchange emails, only sent our own updates. It’s nineteen years since I last any of the others. I still get the occasional message from Buffy, she’s a counsellor and Dawn’s in Washington. Willow sends regular group updates about the Slayers school. She and Kennedy are big parts of that. I don’t reply. The last time I saw Willow was my wedding day, sixteen years ago, November.

That was a strange day, with a pleasantness I hadn’t associated with ‘strange’ before. We got married in a gorgeous little church out of Saginaw, like in the Simon and Garfunkel song. It was a little ceremony. Angie’s parents moved there when she left for college, it was their local church and they were the only people present. Until Willow showed up.

I think she’d done some kind of mojo on me so she’d know where I was. She didn’t deny it, not really. The four of us, me, Angie, and her parents were standing around outside waiting for the time to begin when I saw red hair at the bottom of the path.

I just stared along with everyone else as Willow waved and continued walking towards us.

“Sorry, the others couldn’t come,” she said when she reached us. “I told Kennedy it was an old Scooby thing, but I’m not even sure it’s that, is it, Xander?”

She grinned cheekily at me. I shook my head, too shocked for the moment to move.

“You didn’t think I’d let you go without actually being there, did you?”

I shook my head again. She laughed and hugged me tightly. I’d missed that. Almost two and a half years without seeing Willow and hugging her was the one thing I still knew how to do. I laughed into her hair.

“You know how much I love you, right?” I asked.

“About half as much as I love you,” she said gently.

It was the exchange we’d shared on the day I was supposed to marry Anya. It grounded everything again. I realised exactly where I was and how affronted my parents-in-law-to-be actually were.

“Ah, this is Willow Rosenberg,” I said, presenting her to them.

“You were part of the Scooby gang, too?” Angie asked.

Willow glanced questioningly. I shook my head, hoping Angie wouldn’t notice.

“Yeah,” Willow said. “I live in Cleveland now. I couldn’t let my best friend get married without me.”

“I’ve known Willow since the first day of kindergarten,” I said.

Willow chuckled lightly. But she became aware of the awkward glances she was getting from the others. She held her hand out to Angie.

“You have to be Angie,” she said. “Xander hasn’t told me very much about you, except that you’re brilliant.”

“He thinks he’ll score points that way,” Angie said. She seemed to be warming to this latest, female, invasion.

“He doesn’t get any points with me,” Willow said, sounding curious. “But then I don’t suppose brothers ever do, either.”

She smiled at Angie in way I may have described as flirtatiously except that I really didn’t want to think about that.

That seemed to do the trick. Angie was now quite happy to stand out side the church she was getting married in, between her parents and her fiancé and make fun of me.

The priest called us in. Mr Hardesty was to be my best man, but in the end he stood next to Willow and she signed under my name on the papers. It was just the way it was supposed to be. Buffy didn’t need to be there because there weren’t any demons. I couldn’t remember a time I hadn’t noticed Buffy’s absence.

It was nice seeing Will again. She chatted Mr and Mrs Hardesty up as we walked from the church. They had been suspicious me, naturally enough. It wasn’t an impression that was helped by either the eye patch or Angie’s sudden announcement that we were getting married.

I had actually, and properly, proposed after Angie had changed the latest flat after we crossed the state border. But when we’d showed up on her parents doorstep about three weeks later Angie had introduced me as her fiancé, before she even gave them my name. I was dirty and sweaty from driving, and my eye patch was itching.

Whatever stories Willow told they liked me.

We had a late lunch after the ceremony. It and the night in the hotel were a wedding present from Angie’s parents. Angie had actually blushed at the gift of the room. I acted properly manly and thanked Mr Hardesty solemnly. I think he winked at me.

“Ooo, I got you a present too,” Willow said.

She’d grown a lot in the four and a half years since Tara’s death, but that was pure Willow-ness from as far back as you wanted to go.

She pulled a little box out of her bag and placed it on the table with a flourish. Angie opened it. It was intricately wrapped and tied. While she struggled with the wrapping Willow pressed a little bottle into my hand.

I patted her hand and slipped the bottle into my pocket. It was no doubt something magic. And either Willow would tell me of she wouldn’t need to. She’d gotten craftier since tenth grade. I think Kennedy was influencing her.

Angie opened the box with a ‘ha’ of triumph and held it out. Nestled in the folds of tissue paper were two wooden turtles and an interlocking puzzle, which appeared to have been made out of pirates’ hooks.

“The puzzle’s ‘cause of Xander’s eye, and how he always wanted to be a pirate. The turtles are for the two of you. They fit together like a puzzle. They don’t know where they’re going, but they’ll get there, and they’ll get there together.”

She smiled. Mr and Mrs Hardesty smiled. Angie grinned so widely she was holding back tears. I traced the metal of the puzzle with one thumb. Willow had come. Willow had come; and she’d let me go.

“Mazel Tov,” she said, raising her glass to the table and nodding at me.

I reached for her hand under the table and squeezed it tight. I held Angie’s hand too, but I wasn’t saying goodbye. Willow was the first Sunnydale person to meet Angie. And she knew Anya much better than Faith did.


	4. The Boy, the Bride, his Friend and her Lover

The conversation picked up again. Angie got into one of the long-standing arguments she had with her father. Her mother was occupied refereeing. They kept score, I’m sure.

“She’s like Anya,” Willow said to me, watching Angie.

“You think so?” I asked.

“Don’t you?”

“Yeah. But I though it was just, you know, me making up things.”

“Nah,” Willow said “You see well for a one eyed bloke.”

I’m sure the bloke was as deliberate as the reference to my impaired sight.

“Thanks,” I said.

“She’s also kinda hot,” Willow said.

“Willow, are checking out my wife?” I asked.

My wife. I grinned, no doubt very goofily considering the look Willow gave me. I think she thought the same thing I did about what I had said. It was strange. But in the way that the rest of our lives had been so strange, it fit.

“I’ve got no hope,” Willow said, reassuring me, but not looking away from Angie. “She’s nuts about you.”

“You can see that?”

“Duh!”

“It’s not a witchy thing is it?”

“I thinks it’s residue from my knowing exactly where Xander is and who may be checking him out stage. She’s definitely caught the Xander bug.”

She nodded happily. It was strangely almost like the Buffy years had been a kind of dream. The Hardesties decided that they were neglecting the rest of the table and turned back to us.

“Ms Rosenberg, are you to be married?” Mr Hardesty asked suddenly. He’s a strange old-fashioned man. “I notice you don’t wear a ring, but that doesn’t always mean much these days.”

“I don’t think I will marry, sir,” Willow said, with equal solemnity. “But I am in a committed relationship.”

She smiled her sweet smile which I knew as I’m-being-nice-but-you’re-not-going-to-push-it. Mrs Hardesty seemed to recognise it.

“It’s good to see young people being sure of themselves,” she said. “It’s good that you have someone, and that you can see that it’s serious. Will you have children?”

I hadn’t known Mrs Hardesty very long, about a week at that stage, but she seemed quite firm in her views that children made a couple.

“I don’t think so,” Willow said politely. I was infinitely grateful to her for being so tactful.

Mrs Hardesty tutted. “You’d make a great mother dear. Don’t let anyone else convince you otherwise.”

“Thank you,” Willow beamed. “I do hope to become a teacher when I’ve finished college.”

“You haven’t finished yet? I don’t see that you could have had any trouble.”

“Oh, no. My college education has been interrupted by various Things.”

The table turned to more general topics of college, subjects, professions, how construction was a good solid occupation and really anyone could do what they had decided to do. The last was aimed at Angie who hadn’t decided what she wanted to do with her Media Business major, although running away was better than working in a diner. Even Buffy now had been able to quit being the Slayer.

Angie changed the topic by asking Willow about Cleveland. I had spent some time with Willow and Kennedy there, they had a nice little set up going. And a well built house.

“It’s good. It’s not California,” Willow said. “My partner and I have let our spare room out to this great guy.” I knew what she meant, they had a Watcher.

“He’s got a fabulous collection of books. Giles drooled over a couple of them. He’s a librarian. But we’re looking after Michael, so we get the books.”

She sounded very smug about it. I felt a little sorry from Giles being separated from books. He did like them, the smell, the texture, the joy at opening a book the right page. I had begun to learn what he meant towards the end.

“Still, it’s a reason for Giles to visit, isn’t it?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she said, the smug look not leaving.

“You look after this young man?” Mrs Hardesty pressed.

“Michael’s still only quite young. He’s about seventeen, so Kennedy and I have to look after him.”

“Will, Kennedy’s only, what, twenty-two?”

“Yeah. You and me, we’re old. All of twenty-five. We made it to twenty five, Xan,” she whispered. “You remember the Master.”

“Of course,” I said deliberately. But I knew what she meant. We were going to get old. It was a good feeling, not one, I’m sure, many people have. Anya was terrified of getting old. Had been. Part of me should be glad she didn’t have to go through that.

“You going to settle down yet?” Willow demanded, pulling me out of wherever I was.

“Nah. Angie wants to continue the trip. She said I said I was going to see all of America, that’s what she signed on for.”

Angie laughed and kissed my cheek. She then had to describe everything I hadn’t already said in my emails.

“Mom, dad, if you want to get home before it too dark you’ll have to leave soon,” Angie said at about five o’clock.

Mrs Hardesty looked at her watch. “Oh, yes, dear, we will,” she exclaimed. The look she shot her daughter made Angie blush.

“We should be going soon, Arthur,” she said.

“What, yes, of course,” Mr Hardesty said. He didn’t even pretend to sound startled.

Willow gave me a ‘you got yourself into this’ look. I grinned rakishly at her. At least I think I did, and she didn’t laugh.

“Write to us when you’re back on the road, dear,” Mrs Hardesty told Angie. “It was good to meet such a close friend of Xander’s, Willow. Good luck with your studies.”

“Thank you, Mrs Hardesty.”

“Beatrice, dear,” she said. Which was not an honour she had yet to extend to me.

Mrs Hardesty stood up. “We really should start home while it’s light, Arthur. Congratulations, Xander, on taking our girl from us.”

“Ah, thank you, Mrs Hardesty.”

“Goodness, boy, call her Beatrice,” Mr Hardesty said, standing up.

Beatrice smiled at me. “His name’s Arthur,” she said conspiratorially to me.

“Thank you both,” I said, standing to walk with them to the door.

Angie kissed both her parents and they shook Willow’s hand.

I shook hands with them both. “You understand that it’s difficult for me to wink,” I said.

Arthur chuckled heartily on his way out to the car. Beatrice patted me on the shoulder.

“You be a good boy now, and make my girl happy,” she said.

She left before I had to reply. Willow was very disappointed that I hadn’t said something. Angie touched my shoulder.

“You say goodbye, I’ll meet you upstairs.”

She hugged Willow before dangling the key at me and disappearing.

“You’ve found an amazing family, Xander,” she said watching Angie disappear.

“Can you stop checking her out, please?” I said, closing my eye. “I’ll have to tell Kennedy on you.”

“Oh, and she’d have to punish me,” Willow said, sounding too pleased.

“Will.”

“It’s your wedding night, Xander. It’s tradition that I tease you.”

“Okay.”

“Good. Now the bottle I gave you. A few drops on a baby’s head. Red for a Slayer, green for magic.”

“Thanks,” I said, not sure how I should take it.

“It’s right that you know. We’ve given some to all out people in hospitals. The Council had good connections.”

“It’s good that’s working,” I said.

“How much have you told her?” Willow asked. Her tone was almost disinterested.

“All that I could.”

She nodded, smiling understandingly. But I could that she wasn’t happy in the same way that Robin wasn’t. She wasn’t disappointed in me so much as she was sorry that she wasn’t a part of my life now. So was I, but I didn’t want to put Angie through the trauma of all that could happen.

“We miss you,” she said, looking up at me. Willow’s eyes have always been amazing and I could see through them then. I felt sure about where I was and where I was going. I had no idea where I was going, but I was going to go there with Angie and I wasn’t going to find any monsters on the way. And Willow understood. That was the last piece of the puzzle I’d been missing.

“I miss you too,” I said.

“Good,” she said. “The others said to say congratulations after they’d gotten over the shock. They also actually made me come so that I could make you go through with it.”

“I’m glad you have so much faith in me,” I said.

“Buffy said to make sure that she wasn’t a demon. You’re fine Xander. You’ll do good things.”

“You think?”

“You always did. And we’ll stay in touch.”

“Thank you, Willow.” I knew that it was good.

“You too.”

She kissed my cheek and waved cheekily at me. I didn’t feel regretful or sad or mournful as I made way upstairs to room 202.


	5. Faith

We didn’t keep much in touch. I send the occasional message out of obligation, and I scan the general school updates Willow sends. I have managed, though, to keep regular contact with Faith. She, Robin, and their two kids came through a couple of years ago, tracking a group of Vampires.

I just opened the door one to day see Faith’s bright and happy face. Describing Faith as bright and happy might have been strange at one stage, and it was certainly a surprise to see her grinning. She looked real in a way she hadn’t before. She knew who she was and what she was about. And she liked it.

“Hey! Xan-man, seen any vamp activity in this neck of the woods?”

I glanced quickly over my shoulder to make sure none of my family was around to hear her. She knew they didn’t know. Behind her I could see the knocked about Traveller. Something was good that day. I smiled at her.

“Tea?” I asked.

“Gone Watcher on me, Xander? Yeah, sounds good. There’s still four of us though.”

She gestured behind her to the van and I could see Principle Wood and their two gorgeous children. Nikki was twelve, and a Slayer, although her expression said that it shouldn’t be an excuse for the number of bags she was carrying. She was carrying a lot of bags.

Faith must have seen my look.

“We aren’t staying,” she said quickly, “it’s just the van doesn’t lock properly at the moment. There’s a locksmith Robin knows on the other side of town, he’ll help us out.”

She took Andrew from his father and they followed me through into the kitchen, sitting themselves around the table. I put the kettle on.

“We could ‘adjourn’ to the living room,” I offered.

“I don’t hold with anything fancy, Xan-man,” Faith said.

“Our disreputable selves wouldn’t suit it, I don’t think, Xander,” Robin said.

I hadn’t gotten over him being the principle. His faint disappointment cut me. Buffy had said that he had declared himself the best principle Sunnydale High had ever had. He was alive, so I agreed.

“I got in when my best friend died. I got out when Anya died. I haven’t lost any family since then.”

“He doesn’t have superpowers, Robin,” Faith said, “It’s his choice.”

‘As it’s yours,’ was the silent addition. I did not want to be anywhere near that when it broke. Robin chuckled, struck by something I think it was Faith’s intuition. The whole issue disappeared.

“These brutes are nasty,” he said. “We though you might have heard something.”

“No,” I admitted. I tried to keep as far out of it as I could. “But there’s a bar two blocks over, the Clarinet, it’s our local demon haunt. We don’t have much here, so they should have made a noise. Are you safe in your van?”

“Yeah,” Faith said. “It’s brilliant, portable, always close to the fight. It’s home, so the vamps can’t come in. Willow did some things to it to keep out other nasties. I think that’s when the locks broke. But Robin’s contact’s a warlock, so he’ll be able to steer around it.”

“So, tea for Faith, coffee?” I asked, not knowing what to say to that.

“I’ll have tea,” Robin said, “I’m officially acting in a Watcher capacity, it does well to fit the stereotype.”

I raised an eyebrow at his two kids, but he only shrugged. I got a sudden image of kid who was obviously Buffy and Giles’s and I freaked.

“Don’t tease the boy, Robin,” Faith said.

“You are two years younger than me Faith. And while you might have been much less innocent, I am now forty one years old!” I said, pulling cups out of the draw.

Faith laughed wholeheartedly. “And claiming every single one of them, aren’t you?”

“Coffee, Faith?” I asked, knowing she probably didn’t drink tea.

“Please.”

“Nikki, Andrew?” I asked the kids.

Andrew was still sitting in his mother’s lap. He was eight, but I don’t suppose he got to do it often. They made an odd group. I would never have thought Faith would be so good at the close and happy family thing. But it suits them well. Robin finds it amusing most of the time, I think. Why they called their son Andrew I will never fathom.

The kids both had orange juice. I got out the container of biscuits Angie bakes regularly for drop ins and we were able to have a real conversation. Nikki got bored when the conversation turned away from demons and vampires so I sent her into the living room and she settled down to watch When Summer Comes, or some other chick’s flick. Andrew insisted in participating, or at least listening the adults.

Robin was questioning me about Lizzie’s school when Angie and the girls got home.

“Hello,” Angie said cautiously, looking into the kitchen.

She brightened when she saw Faith, recognising her. They had stopped by about four years before. And I passed on the regular updates I got. She was still a little suspicious of Faith. Faith tended to give people that impression, and I had never been able to satisfactorily explain how it was that I knew her. I tried the first time Faith caught up with me. Angie and I had only been married about eighteen months when we bumped into Faith and Robin in New York.

It was one of the strangest meetings I’ve been a part of. All of them actually involve Faith, so really, I shouldn’t have been surprised. Angie had Sarah tied on her hip, she was almost one. Angie and I were walking along Broadway discussing what it would be like to live in a musical. She was telling me that I had thought too much about it when I heard my name.

I stopped slowly. I don’t turn around immediately when people say my name because it’s one of the oldest tricks. I didn’t see that it was Faith until she had thrown her arms around me. She held me at arms length, grinning and checked me out.

“You look good,” she said, approvingly.

“Thanks. How are you?” I asked, because Faith demanded quick, straightforward conversations. And Angie had raised an eyebrow at me. I could feel it.

“Pregnant,” she said. She nodded sideways at Sarah. “Is that what they look like?”

“Yeah, she’s almost a year old.”

“Faith,” Faith said, holding a hand out to Angie. Angie took it slowly.

“Angie,” she said.

“I heard that Xander had gotten married. I’m glad to see it’s too as nice a person as you.”

“Faith!”

“What? I can’t be a little complimentary to your wife.”

“You and complimentary aren’t a usual combination, Faith,” I said.

“What can I say, I grew up. Found me a man who understands. Actually, I think he found me, but hey, all’s good now. Five by five,” she added with a sly grin.

“We’re you in the Scooby gang, too?” Angie asked.

I’m not really sure what she thought about the strange women who appeared out of nowhere and hugged me. Willow had mentioned Scoobies as well. I think it was that Faith knew I had gotten married.

I was struck then that it was the only sure point she had about my past, that I had been part of something called the Scooby gang. The fact that so far she had met one very bright and warm woman must have softened her view of Sunnydale. I don’t think she thought Willow was the one who had ‘thrown rocks at shop windows and beaten the shooter pretty bad.’

“Nah,” Faith said. “I was a rebel. I helped them in the last fight, that’s how I met Robin.”

“That would be me,” a smooth voice said. It was followed by the man himself.

Faith grinned at him.

“Look who I found,” she said.

“Xander, good to see you again,” he said.

We shook hands and I was able to properly introduce Angie and Sarah. Sarah smiled at him shyly when he made faces at her. Angie seemed relieved that he was obviously able to look after Faith.

“What brings you to New York?” Robin asked.

“We’re on the way to Hershey,” I said. “The long way round,” I added.

He nodded.

“You?” I asked.

“My mother,” he said. “And Crowley. They’re both buried here. I wanted to tell them about the baby.”

I nodded. Faith quirked an eyebrow at my acceptance. But she was doing more than going along with it. I could see that. She just didn’t want it publicised.

“We were about to get something to eat,” Angie said. “If you wanted to catch up some, you could join us.”


	6. New York

It has never ceased to amaze me how accommodating and welcoming Angie can be. She learnt it from her mother, I know that much. But she dragged Robin and Faith with her to a little café we’d found off-off-Broadway.

I stepped back to walk with Robin while Faith and Angie asked each other questions about pregnancy and childbirth.

“She doesn’t know what Faith is,” I said, going for blunt. “I don’t want her to know about that.”

“Xander, it’s part of you, it’s part of what makes you everything you can be,” Robin said, stepping up to the argument smoothly. Curse the man for turning the principled principal on me.

“No, it’s not. Anya was who I was, and she died. Angie is who I am and she doesn’t believe in monsters. She doesn’t hear bumps in the night. She’s never had anything to do with Spike.”

Robin glowered at me. I knew I had hit a sore spot, but until then I hadn’t realised how sore. Everyone had had something to do with Spike. Willow was the one he’d try to bite first time round. Anya slept with him. He understood Giles sometimes when no one else could and Giles had been part of the plan to kill him. Not to mention thinking he was Giles’s son. Faith and he had had a reformed outsider thing going on the last days, and he’d killed Robin’s mother.

Buffy had always seen Spike as he could be, rather than how he was. Enemy, but he was injured. Bad guy, but he helped her save the world. Killer, but he couldn’t hurt people. Confidante, but he was evil. Lover, but he didn’t understand. Warrior, but he was killing people. Then he could have been a champion, but in the end he was a sacrifice.

I wondered if she would ever get over him. I still wonder that. My world has crashed, so maybe he’ll come back. Ha, what a laugh. Then I was more worried about keeping the worry of the Supernatural from Angie.

“Sorry, man,” I offered. “I know you can’t escape.”

Robin shrugged, watching Faith. “I don’t want to,” he said. “I searched my whole life for the monster who killed my mother. When I found him he let me live and went on the save the world. I’m going to keep on till I’ve work out how that could happen.”

“I think you’ll be a while. Spike was odder than Buffy.”

“Good,” he said.

I laughed. I was glad he was watching out for the world.

“You’ve got a beautiful little girl, Xander,” he said a moment later, unsettling revelations put away.

“I know,” I said softly. I have always had difficulty describing how much ‘my girls’ mean to me. It’s a little easier now because I’ve got practice at not being able to.

“It’s gets better,” he said. “She’ll start talking one day. Then she’ll know more than you do. Then you’ll get scared.”

I didn’t really believe him them. But I nodded.

“You and Faith?” I prompted.

He laughed. “Don’t sound so shocked, please. Three months. Six months and I’m going to be a dad. She refused to know what sex it is. We have to call it the Bump.”

“Witch or Warlock,” I murmured. That’s what the mother-in-law in Bewitched had asked. You don’t want to know how much television I’ve seen from crappy motel beds at four in the morning.

“Slayer,” he said. “If it’s a girl, it’s got to be a Slayer. I just want to know if we’ll need extra strong baby locks.”

“I don’t think they show that soon. Willow’s last email said all potentials at the time of the spell, but that they thought potentials born after that wouldn’t be Slayers at birth. The Council didn’t start looking for potentials until the girls were about five anyway, so maybe you’ll only need extra strong preschool teachers.”

He had a far away look in his I know I had had several times in the last year. I elbowed him.

“She’s also got a potion. Tell you if the baby’s Slayer, witch or warlock when it’s born.”

“Thanks. But we’ll have to stop this conversation now.”

We’d reached the café. Angie and Faith were waiting outside for us. Robin offered his arm to Faith to follow Angie through the door. She took it and leaned against him.

“You were never that nice to me,” I said.

“You weren’t a gentleman at the time, Xander,” she said.

“You were hardly a lady, Faith.”

“And I was supposed to behave well because of that?”

“Sit down and eat some food,” I said. “Are you still eating something normal people can stomach?”

“Never did.”

Robin leaned over Faith and whispered in her ear. She eyed me carefully from beneath her eyelashes, so he must have told her what I’d told him. She caught my eye and nodded. An understanding and considerate Faith was someone I was going to have to get used to. I think she still had to, then too.

She kept looking at Robin throughout dinner as if she were surprised to see that he was there. And she kept touching her stomach, steeling herself that she could do what she would have to do.

“How do you guys know Xander?” Angie asked them.

“I was the last High School principle,” Robin answered straight off the bat.. “Xander was in charge of the school’s construction. Faith came to visit a friend of Xander’s who I’d hired as a counsellor. That’s how I met her.”

Faith smiled at him in a sickeningly sweet way. The glace she threw said it had been a deliberate attempt to unsettle me. I couldn’t help being aware that I was older than Faith, and more experienced, and more able. I blinked. It was the strangest feeling because most of the time I had known Faith she’d been absolutely in control, or at least making a good show of being sure of herself. She wasn’t putting that face on anymore.

“Faith had come through Sunnydale a few years before, on her way to L.A,” I explained.

Faith laughed and Angie gave her an odd look. I could understand though, it was a fairly innocuous description of how I knew Faith but her laugh said that there was a lot more going on.

“It seems so strange that you would bump into each other here,” Angie said.

“It is strange,” I said. “I thought I’d managed to run away from you lot for good.”

“Willow caught up with you for your wedding though?” Faith said. “I would have liked to see that, little Xander, all growed up.”

“I am older than you Faith,” I said.

“But I was always more experienced,” she said.

“That wasn’t har— difficult. That wasn’t difficult,” I said.

Faith chuckled. Sarah banged her spoon on the table.

“How long are you in New York for?” Angie asked.

Faith and Robin were going to stay until the baby was born. Then they were going travel a bit until they ran out of money. They explained that Robin was getting a bit of money as a research grant, and Faith had inherited an amount from her uncle. They were both, actually, on the Watcher’s Council, or possibly the school’s payroll. I’d been given a bonus, plus a disability allowance by the Watcher’s Council. I, too, passed the bonus off as an inheritance.

Angie was talking about the difficulties of caring for a child while you were on the road. And Robin was describing some of his childhood. I sat back and listened to how normal it sounded. Faith didn’t describe any part of her childhood. I’m not sure why that was. She couldn’t describe most of Sunnydale, of course, without resorting to euphemisms. Robin was raised by a friend of his mother’s after she was killed; her Watcher. Faith’s life was really too complicated for that sort of explanation, from what I knew of what had happened to her.

Sarah was getting bored to I started playing peek-a-boo with her. She always laughed at me. I only had to cover one eye not to see her and she’d point at the patch.

“When are you going to get a real fake eye, Xander?” Faith asked.

I shrugged. “I’m not sure I will. The patch makes me mysterious.”

“No, the fact that you never talk about your adolescence makes you mysterious,” Angie said. “That patch just makes you look creepy.”

“I want one like Professor Moody had in Harry Potter,” I said.

There are, of course, chances that they can be made. I just haven’t found any one who could do it.

“That’d be creepier,” Angie said.

“And more conspicuous,” Robin said.

“No, but you’d still be able to wear the patch,” Faith said. “The eye could see through things. That’s how they knew that Draco was in that room.”

Trust Faith to have read the books and completely upset the images I had of her. The conversation moved fairly rapidly into an argument over the means used to finally destroy Voldemort. Faith seemed to disagree with the characterisation of the big bad. But we all thought that Dumbledore, at least, saw through it.

It was a nice evening out. I was glad that both Robin and Faith warmed to Angie. Their opinion came to mean a lot to me the last few months together. In a way it meant more than Willow’s opinion because they weren’t going to like her for my sake.

“She’s an odd girl,” Angie said as we walked back our motel.

“Faith?” I said. “Yeah.”

“How well do you know her?” Angie asked. Her tone was mildly suspicious.

“Too well for someone I don’t really know,” I said. “We had a thing once,” I explained.

Angie nodded. I hoped she though it was enough to answer the questions she had.

“What’s her story?”

Angie liked to know people’s stories. She’s very good at talking to people and getting them to tell her things. It works out really well in PR, actually. But I’ve managed to get a hang on not being drawn in.

“I don’t know,” I had to say. “She was always a bit wild.”


	7. Domestic Secrets

Never being able to describe any of Faith’s ‘wild’ escapades meant Angie was always on the look out for evidence of it. Finding Faith and Andrew on one side of the kitchen table and me and Robin arguing over school books on the other side really gave a sense of domestic comfort to all of us.

Angie deposited the groceries in front of the pantry and Lizzie on the kitchen bench. Sarah immediately went and found Nikki in the lounge room.

“You’ve been on the road a while now?” Angie said.

She put the kettle on again to make herself some coffee.

“Yeah. Nikki’s still got two years before she should start junior high. I just have this ‘thing’ about high schools,” Faith explained.

“Yeah, Xander’s like that,” Angie said.

“And he finished.”

“Hey,” I said, as seriously as I could, “You don’t understand the fabulous buoyed feeling you get when you know you’ve survived graduation.”

And then I remembered that it was Faith’s then boss who had wanted to eat us all after his dreadful speech. Faith had been in a Buffy-stabbing-induced-coma at the time.

“I just felt angry when I woke up,” Faith said.

“Sorry ‘bout that,” I said.

“Hey, you had to. I get that.”

Nikki arrived, no doubt roused by the sound of her name, Sarah at her side. She smiled at Angie, but not at Lizzie, who had been relegated to the ‘little brother’ category with Andrew.

“I don’t want to go to school,” she said.

“I still don’t see why we have to send her,” Faith said to Robin. She was obviously teasing him. “I mean, your mom never finished school. And my mom never even noticed when I stopped going.”

“You had Margaret looking out for you then, Faith,” Robin said.

Nikki had obviously heard the story before. She pulled Sarah away from the boring adults. Sarah no doubt dragged her upstairs to her magazine collection. Somewhere along the line Orlando Bloom had gotten old and Christian Wong was now ‘the guy.’

I was intrigued, and fascinated, and all those things; I had never heard Faith talk about her childhood. Margaret had to be her Watcher. Angie, who still knew none of Faith’s story latched onto the information as gently as possible.

“When did you leave school?” Angie asked.

People tell Angie things they thought they wouldn’t tell anybody. Her charm worked on Faith, too, although she must have been willing to let us know. We got the edited, or ‘euphemised’ version of Faith’s life. It still made for a colourful telling. Something about Angie let people tell her things they may not have meant to. Faith finally convinced Angie that she had been wild. It explained a lot of how Faith got to where she was. But it no doubt raised some of the questions Angie had this week.

Angie offered them dinner as the discussion and tales continued.

Nikki and Sarah appeared in the kitchen at about six thirty to ask about food. They’d caught up on everything they needed to in the four years since they’d seen each other. Andrew had fallen asleep on Faith’s lap. I suppose her Slayer strength gave her the endurance required.

“It’ll be just like New York,” Angie said. “Except with more children. And we’ll all be eating the same food.”

“Bethy, do you want to help with dinner?” she called out.

“You alright, Nikki?” Robin asked.

Nikki sighed and said yes. She was playing bored teenager to his overconscientious father. Then he asked Andrew the same thing and received a sleepy nod in return. I realised that it was code. We didn’t know what was what with the world, and they weren’t to let anything slip.


	8. Dawning

Angie, Sarah and Lizzie knew all the stories, of course, they just didn’t know they were real. That was the other reason why never I got the photos out. The Library and the Magic Box were real place, where real weird things happened.

The two photos make a strange couple.

Lizzie pointed to Dawn in the second photo. “How old is she?”

“Dawn was fourteen then,” I said. Joyce had taken it at the Magic Box opening. Giles had an I-can’t-believe-I’m-ding-this look on. He was at the back with one hand on Buffy’s shoulder. She had her arms wrapped around Dawn. We found the Sphere of Dagon the night before, but no one knew anything about Dawn yet. Buffy would learn that night.

The first time I met Dawn she had been spying on us. Buffy invited us for a video night soon after she arrived in town. She insisted that we learn that she was also a normal girl, with a normal family. Joyce was lovely, she insisted on getting us drinks and food and telling us how good it was that Buffy had made such nice friends.

It’s amusing now because I know that she was worried Buffy would fall into the wrong crowd again and get into trouble. It was pity, really, because Buffy corrupted us.

Dawn was a little thing then. Buffy introduced her with a begrudging, “this is my little sister, Dawn.” And a pointed, “She won’t be staying up with us.”

I offered my hand for her to shake.

“It’s a pleasure to finally make your acquaintance, Miss Dawn,” I said.

She giggled shyly, and Willow hit me.

Dawn appeared several time during the evening to spy on us and each time Buffy saw her she stopped the video and told her to go back to bed. I winked every time I saw her and she would disappear behind the wall for a moment.

I can’t imagine the world where that didn’t happen. How did we make it through high school without Dawn? It still creeps me out a little, knowing that the world can be changed like that. Anya once described the world that Cordelia had created with her vengeance wish. But the other thing is that the first photo doesn’t have Dawn, and the second one does. So Buffy has Dawn, I have Anya, Willow has Tara and it’s Giles’s shop like it was his Library.

“So that’s Willow?” Lizzie pointed her out. Willow was the only name she knew.

“Yes. And that’s her girlfriend, Tara.” Willow was sitting on Tara’s lap playing with her hair. I hadn’t noticed that before. But I was aware of the elements of Tara that reminded me of Oz, or Kennedy. It must be the Willow-ness in them, but occasionally Willow and Tara would be holding hands and I would see Oz. Or Willow would stroke Kennedy’s hair and I would see her and Tara.

“Is that mom?” Lizzie asked, peering at the photo of Anya.

It was a strange question. Angie and Anya don’t look that much alike.

“No,” I said, slowly. If Anya hadn’t died, I wouldn’t have left and I wouldn’t have met Angie and I wouldn’t have had Lizzie.

“That’s my fiancé Anya. We broke up just before we supposed to get married. She died about a year and half later.”

“That’s so sad, Dada.”

“Yeah, it is. But I have you, and you always make happy. Little Lizzie.”

“I’m not little,” she said. “I’m going to be ten tomorrow.”

“Then you’d really be getting off to bed,” I told her.

“No, Dada, you have to explain the rest of the photos.”

Somewhere she had learnt the tone that said you were silly for forgetting whatever it was you were _supposed_ to be doing.

“Okay, so that’s Giles, he owned the shop. And he was the Librarian when that one was taken. That’s me again, and Willow and Buffy.”

I wished I had a photo of Spike to show her. Somehow that bastard turned out to be what people needed him to be. When I needed to hate someone or blame someone, he would always rise to challenge. Angel never did that. He’d take it and he’d argue, but he wouldn’t let me fight him.

“How long ago?” Lizzie asked.

She was getting sleepy. I was worried that I would have to carry her up to bed. If I did do my back in it was going to be carrying my daughter.

I counted quickly. “More than twenty years ago,” I said. I was amazed that it had been that long. I’m still amazed that I could go that long without seeing anyone. I really got away with it, I didn’t think would.

“Did you know Faith then?”

The question startled me. I’d received a message from Faith the day before. They were in the area on a holiday tracking a werewolf. They only had that night and the next to capture it. Nikki’s last tracking before she started at school. They’d warned me, and asked me to be on the watch.

Nikki and Andrew had seen nearly as much of the country as Angie and I had. Before I left on first aborted road trip I had never left Sunnydale, not once. And I only got as far as Oxnard on my disastrous road trip.

Angie and I had settled down well before Elizabeth was born. Sarah was born on road, though. We hadn’t made it as far as Florida before Angie fell pregnant. She refused to give up the road until we’d made it to Hershey, which was last on the agenda, and she wouldn’t change it. We had the baby in South Carolina.

She asked me only once what I would like to the call the baby and I answered, “Boy, Jesse, girl, Sarah.” She’d nodded and spent hours on the phone to her mother. At the end of each phone call I talked to Beatrice for five minutes where I was to tell her all the things Angie hadn’t and she told me that I would be fine as long as I didn’t hurt her daughter. To which I always replied, “No, ma’am,” which she seemed to like.

September the tenth 2006 Sarah Beatrice Harris was born at the Columbia General Hospital. I liked the name of the Hospital. Sunnydale had had a Memorial Hospital, which always sounded kind of depressing.

I didn’t cry when my baby girl was born. I just started at her. Sarah had been the name of the daughter Anya and I were never going to have. It was the closest thing I had to her except the photos.

“Sort of,” I answered Lizzie. “I met Faith after the first photo was taken,” I said, pointing to it. “But she was in jail by the time Giles opened the shop.”

“So Giles was the Librarian,” she said. She traced the shops of the bookshelves with her little finger. She didn’t seem at all phased by the fact that Faith had been in prison. I wondered if she’d heard me.

She hadn’t seen the photo’s before. Angie and Sarah had never seen them, either. Even in all my stories I had managed to keep the stories to descriptions. By the time it had become a habit they had epithets; the Slayer, the Librarian, the Vampire, and Willow was Willow. Dawn was the Slayer’s sister, and she probably would have kicked me for it.

Suddenly, for Lizzie, the characters she’d been hearing about had names and faces. They were real people. I had gone to school with people you could take photos of, as well as demon summoners and Slayers.

“Did he really summon demons?” Lizzie asked.

I should have realised that the question was a portent. The straightforward manner fooled me into believing that it was straightforward question. My daughter was almost ten, and just as bright as the friend I had wanted her named for. She wanted to confirmation of what she believed could be true.

“Only when he was young. He was just a stuffy Watcher when I met him,” I said. “You remember the story of how deadboy killed the demon.”

Lizzie nodded, taking the information in and putting it away. Then she yawned.

“If you want to be up for breakfast tomorrow, you’ll have to sleep now,” I told her.

She nodded against my chest. I nudged her to get her stand up and she put her arms around my neck. I sighed a picked her up. I tucked her into bed. I spent another few minutes staring at the photo of Anya, and Dawn’s cheeky smile.


	9. Family Gatherings

The storm didn’t come until the weekend. There’s  
a family tradition we’ve built up; presents with a nice breakfast on the  
birthday morning, dinner in the evening, party on the Saturday, family on the  
Sunday.

Lizzie was, I’m pleased to say, pleased with her  
presents. She got the bag she’d forgotten she’d wanted from Sarah,  
and the art set she’d been lusting after for several months from her  
parents. I have rarely seen the look that Lizzie had on her face when she  
unwrapped her present, even from my wife. Ha, I got to say ‘my  
wife’ again.

She hugged us all and grinned like a maniac for several  
minutes before she finished eating her breakfast.

“You can take the set to school, if you’d like,  
Bethy,” Angie said.

Lizzie looked horrified.

“They wouldn’t understand,” she said.  
“I mean they would just use them for all the wrong things. Like when Dada  
tried to make potions for Willow.”

Angie chuckled at the casual mention of magic. I had  
inklings of what was to come. I had begun to feel a doom gathering overhead. I  
hadn’t felt it in almost twenty years, and I was surprised by how  
familiar it felt. And scared.

The storm didn’t break until the family gathering on  
the Sunday. We were, of course, at Angie’s sister’s house.  
Angie’s brother-in-law didn’t like coming to our house and I  
didn’t like letting Michelle inside either.

I didn’t meet Trevor and Michelle until Sarah was  
about two. They came to our house warming. And that was a joyful meeting.

They were the first to arrive by about half an hour and  
Angie was upstairs putting Sarah to sleep. I opened the door and knew  
immediately who they were. Michelle looks like a younger version of Angie. She  
smiled warmly at me in a way that made me immediately suspicious. She reminded  
me of Lisa; that was not a good thing.

Trevor didn’t like the way Michelle was looking at me  
anymore than I did. But he, of course, blamed me.

“Who’re you?” he demanded.

All right, so we hadn’t been formally introduced. But  
I was married to his sister-in-law, and she did talk to Michelle on the phone  
at least once a month.

“Xander Harris,” I said offering my hand to him.

He shook, which was just as well for him because I probably  
would have found an excuse to hit him if he hadn’t

“Trevor McKenzie,” he said. “And this my  
wife, Michelle.”

I shook hands with Michelle as well. Trevor glowered at me,  
but Michelle was not pleased with the fact I hadn’t kissed her cheek.  
Things might not progress to the homicidal, I thought.

Trevor pushed past me into the house looked around. Michelle  
pushed past me too, but her manner was not nearly as hostile. I sighed and  
hoped Angie or someone else would arrive soon.

I took Trevor and Michelle on a quick tour of the downstairs  
of the house in an effort to keep them together and with me. Michelle smiled at  
me whenever I said anything and Trevor kept making comments like ‘hmm, I  
didn’t think you could _that_ ’  
or ‘interesting, the way you thought to keep _that_.’

They reverted to calm, sensible, interesting people when Angie  
arrived. Michelle was thrilled to see her sister. Trevor kissed her cheek  
lightly.

When Beatrice and Arthur arrived, though, Arthur made  
straight for me.

“I see we got here after Shelly and Trev,” he  
said. “But I wanted to tell you, if you hadn’t already worked it  
out, to just ignore them.”

I was ready to do my ignoring-the-in-laws by the time we  
arrived on the other side of town. Sunday afternoon with Trevor and Michelle  
was getting easier. They had three kids now, which seemed to have calmed them  
down quite a bit. Michelle’s smiles still promised things, but Trevor  
didn’t want to kill me for it. And he’d finally acknowledged the  
fact that I knew something about what I did.

I still wasn’t sure how it was they got along, though.

And I had to ignore Philip.

He opened the door for us when we arrived.

“Hi, girls, how you going?” he asked. He was  
always happy, always cheerful. I could last half an hour before it managed to  
get on my nerves.

Lizzie and Sarah liked their uncle Phil. He was good to  
them. I could see that he liked them, and he respected Angie a way that he  
hadn’t used to. But I didn’t like him because he made me suspicious  
in a way the Hellmouth had. His presence, on top of the already darkening storm  
made me cautious. I’ve learnt how to be cautious cautiously. I  
don’t say much.

“Hello, Philip,” I said.

We shook hands as usual. He kissed Angie and led us into the  
house. Trevor and Michelle have a great house. The entryway is off to one side  
of the main living room, which is huge and includes the dinning table.  
There’s the kitchen on one side, then the hallway to the bedrooms on the  
other. It doesn’t really make sense, but it’s comfortable, and fits  
them all.

Beatrice and Arthur were already there. They don’t  
look any different now then they did on our wedding day, sixteen years ago.  
Trevor was at work fixing some sort of emergency. Those things tended to happen  
on the weekends when there was less of a chance of the press finding out. He  
was supposed to back in time for tea. It was all going the way a family  
gathering should go.

The last time I saw all of my ‘family’ gathered  
together had been in LA, the morning I left. They all gathered in the foyer of  
Angel’s hotel to bid me farewell, and safe driving. Buffy told me that  
I’d do great as a stand in stripper if anyone needed me. Dawn  
hadn’t said anything. And she didn’t cry. She hugged me tight and  
said “be special.”

Giles packed my backs into the trunk of my car. He hugged me  
and said “goodbye, Xander. We have had good times.”

He was the only one who said goodbye; Willow and Buffy  
thought I would be back. We now had a chance to build something, and do  
something that would last. We’d been through so much together and they  
couldn’t understand why I would want to leave when it might be getting  
good.


	10. On the Cleveland Hellmouth

Buffy left too, eventually, but she still knows what’s going on. When I arrived on Willow’s doorstep a year later she didn’t seem surprised. She had an apron on. I had never seen Willow look that domestic since the day she’d spent baking to make up for that spell.

“What’d you do wrong?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Willow said, waving me inside.

I followed her down the hall to the kitchen.

“You know, Will, if you have to make it up Kennedy, there are probably better things to do than bake.”

“Not Kennedy, her sister,” Willow said.

“Sister?”

“She didn’t think I was looking after Kennedy well enough.”

I smirked. Willow hit me. It’s a well-established tradition. Willow offered me any of many things to drink or eat. I was eventually settled with a glass of orange juice and a plate of assorted biscuits. I reminded myself to find someone who could bake better than Anya could.

“Nice house,” I said, to start the ball rolling.

“Is that your professional opinion?” a voice behind me asked.

Turned around. “Could be. Hi, Kennedy.”

“Hi,” she said.

She kissed Willow in greeting. She dropped what she was carrying onto the kitchen bench to hug her too.

“Ah, ah, ah,” Willow said, breaking free of the embrace. “No weapons in the kitchen. Especially nasty, icky, bloody ones.”

“It’s not blood, it’s slime,” Kennedy said with an exasperated sigh.

“I don’t care what it is, it doesn’t come in my kitchen.”

Willow put her on her resolve face. Kennedy smirked as she picked up the weapons and sauntered out of the room. Nobody can saunter as well as Kennedy can. Both Willow and I watched her. When she’d gone and we glanced at each other again we blushed.

“How are you doing, Xander?”

“Well. America’s nice. And very interesting. And has lots of roads.”

“So, I’ve heard. We’ve been around a bit. But after Sunnydale this was the strongest calling point for big bads. We’re thinking of starting up the school just out of town. It’ll be good for the students to have something to fight.”

Kennedy appeared again, clean and slime free.

“Is there an apocalypse coming?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she said. “Do you want to help out?”

I banged my head on the table. My fighting skills hadn’t improved any since Caleb took my eye. Although I can juggle reasonably now, I was not up knife wielding then. Kennedy didn’t believe me.

“The K’toks want to blast a way into hell. They’re quite honourable, so they even if they fight you, they’ll won’t take advantage of the eye. We don’t have a Watcher yet, you’ll at least have to help us research. We just need to know when and where.”

So I ended up in the Public Library at midnight going through the secret catalogue of occult texts. Giles’s connections, I wasn’t sure if it was the Council, him, or Libraries, had found us the local ‘aware’ person who had books to deal with what he was ‘aware’ of.

We’d been murmuring to each other for five hours; and I’d been in Cleveland for six; when I realised that I hadn’t read anything more than a motel information booklet for months. And that I missed it.

Kennedy had killed one of the scouts, who job it was to ensure the safety of the outer perimeter of their sanctuary site. There were others whose job it was to collect the sacrifices needed to draw the power to create a Hellmouth.

“You mean there’s not actually a Hellmouth here already?” I demanded. “After Giles said.”

“He was just teasing us,” Willow said. “But then, there’s always been the possibility to create one here. It’s just the rituals involved are too onerous compared to catching the bus to California.”

“So we go in and Kennedy kills them and we’re safe?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

So at three o’clock in the morning I was sitting in my car outside an abandoned factory waiting for my signal to go in and take all the captives out. My part went smoothly. Kennedy appeared fifteen minutes late, grimacing and covered in more blue slime. Willow immediately grabbed her lover and did some magic. Kennedy was able to walk properly after that, but Willow was exhausted. I drove everyone back to Willow’s house.

The seven teenagers we had found all had latent magical talent. Willow and Kennedy spent the rest of the morning discussing what to do with them while I slept. The mystical stuff was beyond me. But when they woke up I was able to help them a little to come to terms with what had happened.

I spent a few weeks with Willow and Kennedy. But they were beginning to get very serious about the idea of a school. They were both at college. If Willow did teaching and Kennedy trained as a psychology and sociology they would have good qualifications for what they wanted to do.

I was three days out of Cleveland when I blew the first tire of the trip. I was getting the tool out of the back when I found the book. Giles had hidden a book in the tools compartment; A Watcher’s Guide to the Slayer. The dedication in the front said, ‘I know you’ve gone, and I congratulate the strength it took. Find your path and tread it well, even if this book leads you nowhere along it, you will always be able to find us with it. Best Luck, Giles.’ It is a good book. I’ll have read it soon, but it is solid and smells musty. I used it prop open the door back to LA and the good fight and I didn’t think any more about it.

That was the last time I had anything directly to do with the school or anything demonic. It was the last time I had serious knowledge other people didn’t want. Until Philip introduced me to his girlfriend.


	11. Into the Breach

I wonder how many of these types of knots I’ve passed on my life. And Philip’s had a fair few girl friends. We see him four or five times a year, on the birthdays we can both make it too, and he seems to have a new girlfriend every time.

“Xander, mate. This is my girlfriend, Sally.”

Sally was tall, well-built, pretty, with long brown hair and pale blue eyes. She looked a little like Dawn, which put me off for a moment. Although she looked older than Dawn would be.

“Sally, this is Angie’s husband, Xander,” he introduced me.

Sally offered her hand. When I shook it her grip was strong, and firm; not something I had expected from the way she looked.

“It is a pleasure to meet you, Xander,” she said.

As the afternoon progressed I learnt only two things about her. She spoke with a strange evenness and she selected her words a shade too precisely.

I managed to get her own long enough to ask her if she was a robot.

She looked puzzled. “No, I am not a robot,” she said.

She wasn’t as good as April or Ted, but she was still pretty good. And she would relay my suspicions to Philip. I chuckled.

“Good. I wouldn’t want to make a mistake. How long have you known Philip?”

“Oh, it seems like forever. He has always been so nice to me. And he understands me. I don’t think I could ever leave him. We have been through so much together in such a short time.”

At the time when it seemed that Sunnydale was slowly infiltrating my life in Harrisburg the last thing I needed was a robot with minor mind skimming abilities. Unless the problems I had with running away were beginning to surface as clichés.

Faith had left me a short message saying they’d found the werewolf. They were taking him back to his home and the local coven. I had no one in the area to defer to.

I sidled over to Philip not long before tea should be ready. I nodded over to Sally.

“She’s good. Where did you get her?”

He looked at me. It was one of the looks Trevor used to give me before Caroline was born.

“We met in Berlin. American tourists abroad.” He chuckled with charming self-deprecation.

“I like her. She’s good. How much did she cost?” I asked.

Philip face darkened. I hadn’t fought anyone in way too long; the thought of being beaten to a pulp by my brother-in-law was appealing. He raised his fist in threat and I caught it. I was struck by the fear that he didn’t know she was a robot. But the fear in his eyes outweighed the anger.

“Did you make her yourself? Because that’s impressive,” I said. I was impressed.

He didn’t relax at all.

“It is illegal for any person to construct, create, or have responsibility for a robot which does not know or acknowledge that it’s a robot,” I told him.

He paled at my tone of voice, which was appropriately deep and menacing. He looked at my eye and shivered. I still don’t know why people find a one eyed glare so much more threatening that a two-eyed glare.

We would have continued our quite war, but Trevor rang the doorbell. Caroline rushed to the door. Her father’s arrival meant we could have tea.

“Hey, sweetie, can I come in?” he asked.

My blood ran cold. I reached immediately for our bags. We were, thankfully, not far from the couch beside which they had been placed. Giles would be proud of that sentence. I heard Lizzie say, “don’t say it Caro,” before Caroline said, “of course, daddy, you can come in” in the sweet, confused way children have.

Lizzie ran straight back into the living area before Caro had finished. I pushed a stake into her hand pushed her towards the bedroom hallway.

Caroline screamed and ran straight after Lizzie.

“Monsters, monsters,” she yelled at us.

Beatrice followed her, hoping to calm her down. Arthur followed Beatrice, to be the other half of her side of the conversation.

I was simply glad that Caro had escaped the vampire. The part of me that wasn’t preparing for the fight or its aftermath sighed. Michelle, of course, went to see what was happening. I grabbed two stakes in each hand, handing one to Philip.

“Is Sally strong?” I demanded.

He nodded weakly.

Trevor made it to the living room before Michelle made it to the entryway. He was in game face. She didn’t know what to do. But she did take a step back.

“Waiting so patiently here for me?” he asked her. His voice was sweet in that creepy way.

He sidled up to her. I knew if I intervened he would think it was in her interests. Well, it would have been. But letting a vampire think you had been having an affair with the woman who had been his wife was not a wise move.

Philip gestured to Sally, and she came over to him with a bright ready-to-help smile. I gave her one of my stakes.

“Put this through Trevor’s heart,” I said softly.

She looked puzzled. At least she’d been built to not kill.

“Exactly that,” Philip said.

It didn’t help.

“WC so ordered. Written in yellow crayon,” I whispered out of the side of my mouth. I prayed.

She nodded and gripped the stake.

I don’t know how Willow had ended up on that committee. I could understand her being consulted on the magic clauses. She was the obvious choice to make sure that the clauses didn’t discriminate or unfairly persecute people. But every piece of equipment that could be bought to be put into a robot responded to orders written in yellow crayon.

“See if you can just hold him still first,” I said.

Trevor had grabbed Michelle by the arm. She was still half a step away from him. But she had stopped struggling.

“Angie, Sarah, Kyle, Beck, get to the bedrooms now,” I shouted. “Go with Nana.”

Kyle and Beck fled. They were under ten. Angie looked at me, startled. She looked back at Trevor’s disfigured face and yellow eyes and swallowed. She looked sad the moment she knew what she was looking at. Sarah had come to the same conclusion, without understanding any of the consequences. She took her mother’s hand and dragged her to the bedrooms after the others.


	12. Back to the Beginning

Trevor tried to follow them, but Sally slipped in front of him. He raised his left hand to knock her aside. She caught it with the hand that held the stake. He dropped Michelle to face Sally.

Philip bent down low to grab her out of Trevor’s line of sight. I know robots are strong; Ted fought Buffy April threw Spike out of window. And that was before the Buffy-bot patrolled for several months. But I hadn’t realised that they didn’t have muscles before I saw Sally holding Trevor.

Buffy never seemed to sweat it, or tense up, when she was fighting, so the bot didn’t either. But Sally had both Trevor’s wrists. She looked like she could stand still, holding the struggling vampire until the next apocalypse, or maybe two after that.

With silence in the room now I could hear Trevor’s gang outside and Lizzie whispering furiously in the next room. Trevor could probably hear what they were saying. The invite had been for ‘daddy’ only. It seemed like Lizzie was trying to keep everyone in the room. I hoped she wasn’t telling them about vampires. I had a plan.

Michelle began to crawl towards the bedrooms. I had to keep Trevor’s attention on me.

I dropped a stake and took a bottle of holy water out of my bag. The back compartment had held stakes, holy water and crosses for as long as I could remember. The look on Buffy’s face when she handed me the cross on my first trip underground had drilled ‘be prepared’ into me more deeply than any number of boy scout meetings.

“This is holy water,” I told Trevor. “Do you know what it can do?”

He nodded.

“I want you to hide your face, explain succinctly to your wife that you’re leaving her, and not taking anything. I want you to tell your children that you love them, but you might not be able to see them for a while. Then you will walk out of this house and this city and you take the others out there with you. In return I won’t tell the local Slayers that you were here for two days. If you don’t agree, you will drink this bottle slowly over the next three days. If you try anything Sally will stake you well and good.”

Trevor managed to look contemptuous despite his bindings.

“By the power of the Watcher’s Council and the BoM I declare Trevor McKenzie a vampire and his status legally dead. As witnessed by Philip Hardesty, muggle, on the 13th day of June, 2021. His widow is to be offered compensation. Do you wish to offer any explanation, sir?”

Damn Giles, and Willow, and Buffy, for their faith that I would do what had to be done when it came down to it. An anonymous enveloped arrived in the mail five days after we moved into our house. It was addressed to me, but there was no telling who it was from. It contained a short note from Willow congratulating me on settling down somewhere so much more appropriately named than Sunnydale. I gave the note to Angie.

The rest of the message was a long, formal letter from Giles explaining the structure and duties of the Watcher’s Council and the BoM. I also received an ID card with all my details; name, age, height, hair and eye colour, my father’s middle name, my mother’s maiden name, and my favourite colour. I’m sure it’s charmed in some way to make sure that people can’t pretend to be me.

I got it out, still holding the stake, to wave it in Trevor’s face.

The WC and BoM work as undercover as possible. There aren’t as many rules on them as in the Men in Black movies, because we are dealing with people who are already dead. Legally they have no rights, and they also have no corpses. And BoM’s associated with the CIA now, who do everything below board anyway.

So much for everyone being sad that I ran away. Willow and Kennedy don’t run the school full time since Willow’s son was born. Giles researches from the England end of things, although he’s been spending more time in LA apparently. Buffy’s a therapist and Dawn’s an assistant to someone in Washington. Andrew, of all of us, is the most involved in the higher ranks. Faith’s still at least half a rebel. And still I get sent the updated rules.

The rules changed about nine years ago, of course. The first two rules of the ‘public’ handbook Buffy put together are the same; ‘don’t die,’ and ‘anyone can stake any vampire at anytime.’ But if the family is to receive compensation they need to be declared a vampire, and in order to do that they need have a distinguishing description. They couldn’t just declare all out war on the vampires with the new Slayers, because they would have organised a defensive position. A vampire can still survive reasonably well on it’s on it’s own and quiet.

So if you want to hunt a vampire deliberately, it needs to have been declared. But that was really just to keep Angel safe. All witnesses need to be identified by their ‘official’ description. I had thought Dawn had put ‘muggle’ in. But actually it was probably Faith. According to my card my official description is ‘aware muggle.’ Which means I have to show my identifying card to the vampire I’m about to stake. If it’s not too risky. It’s been sitting in the back section of my wallet for over ten years now.

The first time I got to use it was on my brother-in-law, while my wife huddles in the next room and my daughter knows what I’m facing. I wasn’t happy. And Trevor seemed to know what I was talking about. I surprised by that because most fledgling vampires didn’t know about the Slayer. The group outside must have been around a bit.

Trevor didn’t say anything.

“Why?” I demanded. I held the bottle close his eye.

I could see the fight between the demon, which wanted to attack, and the force of the memories, which knew to trust me. The demon’s plan was held in check by Sally. He had to talk, so did so in the cocky manner Spike had had.

“I owed them money. Not much, and nothing to hurt the kids. I couldn’t when they came round today. I wouldn’t let them at the house. They said they couldn’t make me do it, but they could make me want to. So they did.”

He shrugged. All I could feel for him was pity. Faintly I could hear Jesse’s mocking voice, saying he wasn’t sorry. Then Giles said “you’re not looking at you’re friend, you’re looking at the thing that killed him.” And my own voice telling Buffy that Willow said to kick Angel’s ass.

‘I don’t like vampires,’ I thought ‘I’m going to take a stand and say they’re not good.’

And yet I was as scared that day as I was last Sunday. Twenty-five years and shock finally does wear off.

I nodded to Sally. “Let go.”

Trevor lunged at me. When it comes down to it, they really are all just stupid. I had my stake up ready, and with the force of his lunge it went through his heart.


	13. Aftermath

I’d forgotten how dusty vampire dust was. It sort of explodes over everything. Philip stared at the space that Trevor had been. Sally simply wiped the dust of her clothes. I shook my own clothes out before collapsing against the wall. I wouldn’t ever see him again.

“What can I tell Michelle?” Philip whispered.

‘Oh, god, the cleanup,’ I thought. We had a secrecy thing now. It was also a general keep people happy and calm thing.

“Nothing,” I said sternly. I managed to pull myself together. “You take Sally to be reprogrammed and say nothing to Michelle or Angie, and I won’t tell the Watcher’s Council what you were up to. I’ll do the talking.”

He looked like he was going to argue. But he had worked out that I could probably hold up my end of the deal. He was smart. He possibly did build Sally. She might even come to the next family gathering; no one else thinks robots are real.

I opened the front door first. The leader of the gang snarled at me and tried to enter. I stepped back calmly.

“Trevor is dust. I will be reporting this to the Watcher’s Council. Get gone.”

They did. Philip was trying hard to explain keeping this a secret to Sally. I ignored him for the moment.

I whistled before I opened the bedroom door. It was a song I made up for Angie when she was pregnant. Lizzie was standing in the middle of the room, stake in hand while the others had crowded themselves onto Caroline’s bed.

“Dad, what good was that bit of wood going to have? and where did you get it anyway?”

I looked at Lizzie. She understood and shook her head slightly.

“I just wanted to give you something that might hurt them, put them off. I think it’s from Grey’s building site. I though about making it into a Christmas tree.”

I took the stake from Lizzie. It was I nice shape, if I do say so myself. Too long, for the width, for a Christmas tree, but I had thought that at the time I had made it. I like making stakes. I got quite good at it in High School. And, as it turned out, I do have a natural affinity for wood things. Cordelia never got the hang of it. But I have also carved other things for the girls, and a state when Sarah was six I made her an axe and taught her how to wield it.

I put the tree my back pocket and walked over to Michelle.

“I’m sorry,” I managed to say before she burst into tears. Angie put her arms around her. I knelt in front of them.

“Is he, is he dead?”

“No. He…” oh shit “He’s gone. He was gambling, hard. He said that he never meant to hurt you or the kids. But he liked the life he found. I don’t he’ll come back.”

She just shook her head.

Caroline was only a little older than Lizzie. “What happened to his face?”

Rule three: like a magician’s tricks, don’t ever give away the excuses.

“I’ve seen a drug that does that,” I said slowly. “It’s called PCP. It does all sorts of things, none of them nice. Your father would never have wanted to hurt you.”

“But now he’s gone?”

“Yes.”

Her face fell, but she didn’t cry. Shock, I knew. I hugged her as warmly as could given that my heart didn’t seem to be beating any more than Trevor’s had. Lizzie wrapped her arms around me too. Then Kyle, Beck and Sarah.

Philip entered softly some time later. He gently put his arms around Michelle, too. I hadn’t noticed Beatrice and Arthur until she stood up. The effect that had was quite amazing. It was the strongest ‘the test is over’ since I proposed to Angie; first flat tire over the Michigan border.

“We should feed the children,” she said.

I almost laughed at the simplicity of the thought that hit me. She sounded so much like Giles. The children did need food, and the adults needed something to do. I stood, pulling the kids upright with me.

We fed them, soothed them, and put them into bed on mattresses in the living room. Sally was still curled up on the couch where she’d been when we emerged. I wasn’t sure if she was sleeping or had been shut down, and didn’t raise the issue with Philip.

Angie slept with Michelle in her room. Beatrice and Arthur had the bunks in Beck’s room. I had Caroline’s and Philip had Kyle’s. I had all night to think about how to raise the issue with my wife. I know that Olivia had left Giles because of the risk. And I know how sad he’d been about that, because he was a Watcher. But he was a Watcher, and I was a carpenter.

I must have fallen asleep because I woke up with Lizzie sitting on feet.

“You have to teach me,” she said.

I hadn’t slept enough. “What?” I asked.

“To fight. Just a little, to protect myself. I know I’m not a Slayer, but Dawn fought, and she wasn’t. And you’re still here too.”

“There just–” I began wearily. But she hit, hard.

“They’re not just stories. I saw his face. No one needs an invitation to their own house. And Aunty Shelly would never let that much dust in the house.”

“Anya died, so did Jenny,” I said. “Neither of them had any powers.”

“Neither you nor the librarian had powers. I need to be able to protect myself if I’m going to go clubbing at night.”

“I’d rather you fought vampires than that,” I said.

“Then I’ll fight vampires,” she declared.

“A right little Watcher, aren’t you?”

She beamed. I sighed.

It was the main concern Giles had had. With the destruction of the Watcher’s Council there were about six Watchers left alive in the world. Willow’s concern had been finding out the full effects of the spell. Kennedy had wanted Willow to rest. Buffy paced around the foyer of the Hyperion waving the scythe to emphasise her point.

“We need to find the Slayers. All of them, and soon. At least when the Council only had find one there was less chance of coincidental whatevers. And people putting two and two together. Some of them are going to get to five, and most will get to three. I don’t want them even counting. Giles, we have to get moving.”

“We said ten days, Buffy, you’ve given it six,” I said. I just wanted to sleep the rest of my life away.

“Ten days of little girls all over the world suddenly breaking things and beating up their brothers. How do we reach them.”

“I’m sure I could trace them with the scythe,” Willow said.

She was sitting in Kennedy’s lap, her head on her lover’s shoulder. Buffy looked hopefully at her best friend.

“You agreed to ten days,” Kennedy said. She looked fierce. And, I realised, was just as strong as Buffy. And had had training.

“Watchers,” Giles said.

“They all got blown up,” I reminded him.

“And they weren’t much good any way,” Buffy said.

“Giles was good,” Faith offered.

“They should have a witch, too,” Willow said.

I stopped paying much attention. I knew that I had to get out before I was roped into building something that meant nothing to me.

“We can’t just resurrect the Watchers Council, Giles,” Buffy said.

“No, I agree. But we will need civilians trained in research and demonic languages and all that. As well as mentoring facilities for the new Slayers. We can’t very well tell everyone what has happened. We can train new Watchers in the new philosophy.”

And it seemed she would need the book Giles had so thoughtfully hidden in my car.


	14. A Double Gammon

I took all the children to school after breakfast. We managed to organise the whole thing with any words at all. Beatrice helped make lunches and pack bags. When I got back Angie and Philip were helping Michelle pack up all of Trevor’s things.

Philip had sent Sally home. He looked frustrated, and tired. I think he’d thought that robots were all there was to the supernatural element of the world. To discover that vampires were real as well was uncomfortable. But in buying a robot he must have come across references to them.

Angie was angry. She was trying to ignore the thoughts going around her head that said that I had told her about me adolescence. I had to go to work. The house wasn’t as sad as if he had died, which was just as well. There was enough anger in Michelle to keep her going.

I kissed Angie goodbye, and Michelle, and shook hands with Philip. But Angie was distracted and didn’t really reply.

We were all home again at five o’clock. It was Sarah’s night to make tea, so we were having risotto again. It’s really very nice, but we’ll have to teach her how to make something else.

We went through the family ritual of explaining what had happened with our days. Angie had spent the afternoon at work after leaving Michelle with her parents to clean up the house. We discussed the President’s comments on the new housing program that had come out of the senate. He’d been in office for six months, and he was still in the grace period.

But no one said anything about Trevor. I kept looking at Angie. She wasn’t looking at me. The not looking wasn’t conspicuous, but I couldn’t tell what she was thinking. There was no way I could bring up Trevor if she had successfully forgotten the whole incident. Sarah, it seemed, had bought my explanations of what had happened, and had enjoyed tormenting her friends with maths problems.

We’d just finished eating when the phone rang for Sarah. I don’t know if Kai is actually her boyfriend, or if she just wants him to be. She grabbed the phone and disappeared upstairs. Angie disappeared too with the work she hadn’t done that morning.

Lizzie and I played backgammon. Arthur taught me to loose respectively in the week me had at their house before our wedding. I taught both Sarah and Lizzie to play, but Lizzie took to it much more readily. She has the ability to adjust tactics to the various dice rolls. I’ve seen Buffy fight, you have to block each blow as it comes. Strategies work, but detailed plans don’t. Elizabeth is a biblical name, like Sarah. I wanted her named for Buffy, the strongest woman I know, not just literally. Of course, I can’t call her Bethy, like Angie does, because I’m nervous of one day calling her Buffy. Which would not be good.

My first throw was a one, and hers a six, so she secured her seventh point straight off. It was going to be an embarrassing game for me. The first time she beat me I was proud. She could beat me consistently by the time she four and I remembered what Robin had said about being scared.

“Who killed uncle Trevor?” she asked.

“There was gang outside their house. He had been gambling with them. They wanted him to pay his debts. He couldn’t.”

“So they killed him.”

“They turned him into a vampire, that’s worse. He could have hurt the people he loved much more than if he were simply dead.”

“Then why didn’t you tell aunty Shelly that he was dead?”

I had to answer that one carefully. Lizzie’s questions were motivated in part by curiosity. For the most part, thought, she was a scared little girl. I couldn’t give her the harshly honest “they would have wanted to see a body.”

“People don’t like knowing about the things we know, Lizzie.”

“But she hates him now,” she said. She was still working it out.

“It’ll keep her going. It’s something she can hold onto. You can’t hold on to grief. We will mourn his death, Lizzie. But the monster that came into house wasn’t him. Trevor was already dead then. And in a fight like that, you protect the people who are alive.”

I blotted her, but I only had two inner points covered.

“Couldn’t he have been like the vampires you knew?” she asked. “They were good.”

I gave the speech Buffy had about Angel having a soul. And I did my best to explain Spike’s slow evolution into a useful creature. I hadn’t payed that much attention to it, and all my memories of him were clouded by the way Buffy had said his name for the last time. I could tell her, though, that fighting was what he did, and in the beginning at least, fighting with us had been the only way. Then it became habit, not choice.

“So he didn’t choose to be good,” Lizzie said. “He just ended up like that.”

“In a way. But he did go and get himself a soul because he had hurt Buffy, and he didn’t want to do that again. Because he loved her.”

“But Trevor loved Michelle, and Caroline, didn’t he?”

Lizzie had managed to take two of my pieces while still asking the most difficult questions. I wasn’t trained in this. I realised for the first time that part Giles’s Watcher’s training would have been how to talk to Potentials and their families. I wanted Willow with her motherly baking and teacher’s explanations to come and tell my daughter exactly how bad the world could be. My wife was in no position to say anything. And I had wanted it like that.

“He did. He loved them very much, which is why he never wanted them to get hurt. A vampire is very strong. And they can’t come in uninvited. You know that?”

I had put both my men back on the board, so she took another one. She nodded.

“I’m serious, I’ve seen it work,” I told her. “When Willow de-invited deadboy from the Slayer’s house she said he bounced off the air in the doorway. I saw Harmony’s gang bounce of the door, too. Harmony was so annoyed she stamped her foot. And even when, ah, Dawn, invited her in the minions couldn’t come in. This was a girl who didn’t have original thought all through high school. And suddenly she had minions and plan to take the Slayer down. Even I could fight her. It was like if Trinity had her own gang instead of Kara.”

Lizzie laughed. It was a little hysterical. But no one has ever maintained a straight face on hearing that Harmony had minions. I let her have the stake to put in her bedside drawer. She snuggled down with her bear-bear and smiled at me before she closed her eyes.


	15. The Return of the Redhead

I didn’t sleep. Angie was still working. I knew her avoidance tactics; she wouldn’t finish until I was definitely asleep. She knew I couldn’t stay awake past eleven. I slept. When nothing was any different the following evening I rang Willow.

I worked the next two days in a daze, waiting for help to arrive. I tried a couple of times to talk to Angie about Trevor. Most started with “how’s Michelle doing?” Angie didn’t say much in response. She had never talked much about her siblings after our first night at the bar.

On Thursday afternoon Willow and Kennedy arrived. The resemblance to my wedding day was uncanny. Angie had got home early with the mid weekly shop and I was helping her carry it in from the car. I glanced up to see red hair and dark approaching from the far end of the street. I stared at them until they were close. Angie noticed my stillness and looked up too.

Willow walked up to us and wrapped her arms around me. Sixteen years, and she knew that what I needed was a Willow-hug.

“Too long, Xander,” she murmured.

“I know,” I murmured back. Her hair smelt just the same as always.

She released me to offer a warm handshake to Angie. Kennedy appeared at my elbow.

“Hi.”

“Hey, Xander,” she said. And I was reminded of Oz.

Willow dragged Kennedy back to her side. She and Angie were grinning at each other. I don’t know how Willow managed to do that. Although Angie did know Willow had given me up.

“Angie, this is my partner, Kennedy. Ken, Angie Harris.”

Angie and Kennedy shook hands. I knew they knew that they were the outsiders. Whyever Willow was here, and I didn’t know what she had told Angie, it was to do with me.

It was four in the afternoon, so Angie invited them in without asking where they were staying. Lizzie and Sarah were waiting for us inside. Sarah was suspicious and Lizzie nervous of the visitors.

Willow was delighted to see them. I had emailed Willow when each of them was born. And she’d asked endless child rearing questions when I had rung her. Mostly they started with, “Did either of yours ever….”

“Hi, I’m Willow,” she said, brightly. “I was at high school with, ah, your dad.”

Then she burst into giggles. Kennedy was standing next to me. She leant over to whisper.

“It made sense until her boy was born. After that the idea of you doing it, too, has this effect.”

“I’m strengthened by her faith in me,” I said.

“Of course you are, she’s Willow.”

Willow had calmed down enough to be introduced to the girls. She asked them a little about school and was slowly being drawn into an in depth conversation about history. Or possibly she was drawing them into it. Sarah liked her and talking animatedly about her history teacher. Lizzie was just watching the conversation.

“Tea, coffee, cocoa, we’ve got some of that Deepness-stuff,” Angie offered to Kennedy.

I don’t why we ever agreed to the strawberry drink in the first place. But Sarah swore by it for all sorts of things.

“Sure,” Kennedy said. Willow seemed to go for people who didn’t say much. Except that Kennedy was always much more upfront than either Oz or Tara had been.

“Where’s your boy?” I asked. Amazed that I hadn’t noticed he wasn’t there first off. The way Willow wrote about him in her updates it seemed he was tied to her. Although, he was the same age as Andrew.

“Sandy and Michael are looking after him,” Kennedy said. “They should be fine.”

Willow scowled when she heard what were talking about. She obviously still felt that he should be tied to her. Given the distance of her own parents, I felt for boy.

“Sandy?” I prompted.

“She was having trouble with her parents, and she was fighting, so we took her in. She’s eighteen now?” Willow said.

She ignored us then to talk to the girls.

“Yeah,” Kennedy agreed.

“So that’s three years, she’s doing well. And she gets on well with Dan and Michael.”

Willow smiled. She was fond of her family in Cleveland; that much was obvious. I had always wondered how she survived the winters. We left her with the girls in the kitchen while Kennedy, Angie and I had biscuits and tea in the living room. It took me a few minutes to get over that they were here, and the problems I was having with Angie were real.

We chatted, somehow for half an hour. Angie talked about work and asked Kennedy about hers. Kennedy talked about Willow, Dan, Sandy and Michael. Angie remembered Willow talking about him and their house at our wedding reception.

At four thirty the doorbell rang. I had no idea who might be coming. I hoped that it was someone I would be able to send away quickly. Willow was talking to my daughters, and I didn’t want to interrupt them. I opened the door and found myself confronted by a short, blonde woman with a wide grin. That’s all I registered before she hugged me.


	16. Conversations

“You’ve been gone too long, Xander,” she said.

I laughed. “That’s exactly what Willow said.”

“She’s here already? Good.”

Buffy. I couldn’t get my head around the fact that she was here. I just wrapped my arms around her and closed my eyes. She didn’t hug me as hard as she might have once; at least, it didn’t hurt. I think she’d gotten used to pretending that she didn’t have the power that she did. Although I had always thought that she was have to kill the occasional vampire to be allowed to keep her powers.

When we finally released each other Angie and Kennedy were watching us. Kennedy nodded briefly to her sister-slayer. Buffy nodded back, but she was focused on Angie. Angie knew I knew her, which meant that she was from my mysterious adolescence. And given what had happened recently, and the stories I told, it couldn’t possibly be good.

Buffy was smiling shyly at Angie. Willow had asked her to come. I had no idea what she was playing at. But I had to play too. I could trust them so much more than I could trust myself with this.

“Angie, this is Buffy Summers. She and Willow and I were at Sunnydale High together. Buffy, this is Angie.”

They shook hands with murmured “pleased to meet you.”

“’Buffy,’ is that short for Elizabeth?” Angie asked.

I cursed myself as strongly as knew how. Remember, I’m a builder, I can swear pretty heavily.

“Nah,” Buffy said. “My dad just hated the name Marie.”

She didn’t notice, or ignored, the accusation in Angie’s voice.

“Willow and Kennedy arrived about half an hour ago,” I said, accusation in mine.

“Without the boy?” Buffy asked.

“Apparently so,” I said. I wasn’t sure how often Willow and Buffy saw each other, or how well they kept in touch. But it seemed her attachment to her son was now a permanent part of her character.

“Would you like to come in?” Angie offered.

“Please,” Buffy replied.

She followed us back through the hallway to the living room. Angie poured Buffy a cup of tea from the tea and we all took another cookie. I asked Buffy a little about she was going in LA. Her practice was doing very well. Kennedy left with a murmured apology, insisting that she could find her own way to the bathroom. Angie remembered that Buffy had a sister, and so the discussion turned to Dawn, which allowed Angie and Buffy to talk.

Willow came out of the kitchen with the girls in tow, looking flustered. She interrupted the story of Dawn’s first semester in college.

“Xander, you’ve got to tell them … Oh, Buffy you’re here. Good to see you, but Xander, you’ve really got come and explain that I really do have a son, argh!”

Lizzie giggled. Sarah smiled, too, she claimed she was too old for giggling now. I gave Angie the ‘it’ll be your turn next’ smile and followed Willow back into the kitchen.

I took me maybe two minutes to satisfactorily swear that it was true.

“So how long have you and Kennedy been together?” Sarah asked.

“Almost eighteen years. Well, longer than that now, actually. But it’s our eighteenth anniversary in August.”

“If you don’t mind answering, who’s the father?” Sarah asked.

“Oz,” Willow said.

“The werewolf?” Lizzie asked.

Sarah turned her withering glare on her sister. It was a scary thing to be hit by Sarah’s glare.

“Oh, Xander told you about that,” was Willow’s response. “Yeah, he’s a werewolf. But we didn’t actually, you know …”

She looked at me for direction and I shrugged. They were girls, it was Angie’s place to explain those things. I had no idea how much Lizzie knew, but I knew that Sarah knew enough.

“He wasn’t actually there. It’s a little complicated.”

“He would have turned all wolfy, wouldn’t he?” Lizzie asked.

Sarah looked embarrassed by her sister. Lizzie, at ten, didn’t always understand what was for public consumption. Sarah, of course, wanted to cling to the belief that I had made up most of what I told them. I wish I could believe that too.

“Well that happened when he first came back and found out about Tara. But he’s written me a couple of letters. He’s comes and visits Daniel regularly, and it’s fine.”

Sarah was looking anxious. She stared at Willow a moment before glaring at me. Then she glared at Lizzie. And at me again. Kennedy appeared at my elbow.

“I’d really like a tour of this house,” she said.

I knew she was getting me out of the room. If I left then Sarah and Lizzie could concentrate on learning from Willow instead of being angry at me. I lead Kennedy out of the room as discretely as I could manage.

“How’s Cleveland?” I asked.

“North,” Kennedy said. “We haven’t had a Hellmouth opening in a while. Daniel’s going into fourth grade. Michael’s leaving for a conference in a couple of weeks. How is it here?”

“Okay,” I said. I shrugged.

“Except that Willow’s explaining to your daughters that the scary stories you told them are all real. And Buffy’s talking to wife around to the fact that he brother was killed by vampires.”

I sat down on the step heavily. Kennedy sat the next step down so she could watch me.

“The questions you’ve got to ask yourself is why you didn’t tell them,” she said. “I don’t you think for a moment it was to keep them safe.”

I remembered the flash of laughter in Angie’s eyes when I told her about Caleb. She hadn’t even considered the possibility that I was serious. I knew that it wasn’t to keep them safe. I knew that you were safer if you knew what dangers you might be facing. I hadn’t wanted it to be real. I had wanted it to be not real. I had wanted my family to have the life I should have had. But maybe you couldn’t escape your life. Everything was crashing on top of us. I couldn’t even get angry at Trevor for his stupidity.

Kennedy rubbed my knee. It was a strangely comforting gesture from her. Most of what I remembered about her was her yelling at the potentials. Or covered in demon slime.


	17. The Start

Willow finished first. The three of them appeared at the bottom of the stairs. Kennedy went instantly to Willow’s side. Lizzie looked slightly smug. Sarah had a strange gleam in her eye as she looked at me.

“So it’s all true?” she said.

I nodded.

“Even you out bluffing a dead kid with a bomb?”

“My shinning moment,” I said.

“You saved the world,” she said. She seemed indignant.

“That was easy,” I said. “It was only Willow. She liked me.”

I smiled at Willow. She smiled back.

I don’t know what Buffy said to Angie. I don’t think I ever will. Buffy said ‘patient privilege’ once and then simply refused to acknowledge the question. I don’t want to ask Angie.

And she didn’t say anything to me. Willow took the girls out to the backyard to watch Buffy and Kennedy fight. Lizzie was excited, but Sarah was ecstatic. She’s been dancing and doing circus skill training since she was five. She could appreciate a Slayer’s physical strength and agility.

Angie pushed me up the stairs. The light was streaming through our bedroom window. She angled me in the light to see me properly. I don’t know how I looked, but she laughed. I could see the tears in her eyes, but she laughed brightly and kissed me hard.

Then she seduced me. I managed to seduce Angie the first time we had sex, after five weeks in double rooms. I had had enough to drink to send Scruffy Xander to sleep, but not so much that I didn’t kiss her. We were dancing, and so we continued dancing. It was the first time I had initiated that first time.

This was the first time Angie had seduced me. It felt like all the other first times, and something completely different as well.

The first words she spoke to me after the conversation with Buffy were, “You’ll have to tell me everything, in order, one day.” The next were, “we should all go out to dinner.”

I was too drained, emotionally and physically to do more than smile happily.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked.

“I wanted to have a normal life,” I said, still smiling.

She asked me if I thought what we had was actually normal.

“You ran away with me. You’re still here,” I answered. I couldn’t really describe it, but I knew that I was safe wherever Angie was.

Buffy and Kennedy were arguing lightly when we eventually got down stairs.

“You’re the Slayer, Buffy,” Kennedy was saying.

“I’m a counsellor,” Buffy retorted. “As counsellors go I fight pretty well.”

“I’ve a psych major,” Kennedy said. “I still manage to save the world occasionally.”

“How many times have you died?” Buffy asked.

We were there to see Kennedy take a step back and bow. Lizzie clapped. Sarah was watching them, awed.

“Would you like to clean up before we go out to dinner?” Angie asked, in her usual open and generous manner.

Dinner was strange. With Willow and Buffy there together it was like a Scooby meeting. The fact that we had barely communicated for almost twenty years gave an air of surrealism to the table, like we were wearing bodies that were too old; where we were and who were with were merely dreams of what would come.

Except that Lizzie had just turned ten and was describing her art classes to Buffy. And Sarah was finally discussing her problems with Bern with somebody. Kennedy didn’t seem to be bored. But then Sarah has always been a brilliant storyteller.

Angie, Willow and I discussed the state of the world and the new President. We were half way through dessert, and Willow was comparing morning sickness stories with Angie before Lizzie got the nerve up to ask the question she must have had for the last four days.

“Can I be a Watcher?”

“Can as is are able to, or can as in allowed to?” Buffy asked her.

Lizzie looked puzzled for a moment.

“I want to be a Watcher,” she said. “Like the Librarian, though, not the new Watcher.”

Buffy took a moment to work out what she was referring to, then chuckled slightly.

“Good,” she said with a nod. “If your parents say it’s okay.”

“Dada, can I be a Watcher?”

“You know you’ll have to do two languages? And Classics and History?”

Lizzie nodded eagerly.

“Then it’s up to Angie if we send you off to the school.”

Lizzie looked hopeful at the prospect. Willow had said that she had told their girls that their mother knew, but probably wasn’t happy. Lizzie had enough self-preservation instinct not to say anything there. But not so much to get in way of being a good Watcher.

Willow and Kennedy spent the night on the couch, and Buffy had the spare bed in Lizzie’s room. We had breakfast together like old times and they left. That was all there was to it. Lizzie was going to get to be a Watcher, Sarah had some amazing stories she could play around with, and Angie knew what I hadn’t told her about Faith.

“Tell her everything,” was the last thing Buffy said as she kissed my cheek.

“Stay in touch,” Willow ordered as she left.

Kennedy gave me a look that she would talk to me if I didn’t talk to Willow, I grinned sheepishly.

“We will,” Angie promised. She smiled. “Thank you all for coming. It was nice to meet Xander’s old friends.”

“You should come down to LA, some time,” Buffy said. “You’ll always be welcome.”

Angie had a faraway look in her eye like she was planning a road trip. Lizzie’s eyes lit up at the thought travelling. Sarah looked excited; LA had always fascinated her. I was glad things were all okay. But I didn’t relish the thought of being drawn into another battle. You only ever seem to get a choice in where your life takes you, you can’t draw your own paths.


End file.
